Maya Gwynn
With KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn with Black Perspectives IE, a show we learn about the amazing things members of the Black community are doing in the Inland Empire. My guest today is Kenny Rodgers, Deputy Market Director of the Low Income Investment Fund. Thank you so much for being here, Kenny.
Kenny Rodgers
Thank you so much for having me.
Maya Gwynn
Of course. Can you start by painting a picture of the current reality of affordable housing in Southern California, especially in the areas that you work in?
Kenny Rodgers
I'll start right there, in the Coachella Valley, which is where we have a place based initiative collaboration between a group called Lift to Rise. And it is the tale of two cities. We've got very affluent, very wealthy second and third homeowners. And then, as with the rest of the state probably, and probably even the country, we have a world where just getting by to pay next month's rent is a struggle. The ideal situation would be to reduce rent burden for at least 10,000 families, which is our initiative there in the Coachella Valley, with Lift to Rise,. Paying 30% of your income in rent is a major burden for many of the families, and that is the bleak but realistic occurrence of affordable housing.
Maya Gwynn
What historical, systematic factors brought us to this point, in your opinion, where affordable housing is such a crisis in the state, in this region?
Kenny Rodgers
There's so many factors. It used to be you built a home and it was yours, and you could pass it on as a form of generational wealth. But that concept of the American dream, it's not been really authentic, particularly for people of color. Where I grew up at in Memphis, Tennessee, people were coming back from the war, from the Second World War, and you could see the difference between the houses based on the railroad tracks. It's redlining. Two soldiers coming back, same rank, one black, one white, and as the black soldier, you were not gonna get what your colleague got who lived on the other side of the tracks. And that became a generational thing. To this day, the house my grandmother lived in right now, it's probably worth $15,000. Across the tracks, the homes are worth $250,000 and that difference is sending a family to college. That difference is helping that grandmother to be able to live securely in their old age. So it's been redlining, it's been the commoditization of housing, and it's also just been unfair lending practices. And those are just the first ones I think of.
Maya Gwynn
Yeah, definitely. The same thing happened to my grandfather. He fought in the war. He was not afforded the GI Bill. There's often tension - understandable tension - between new housing developments and concerns about gentrification. And we've seen the negative effects of gentrification in big cities, small cities everywhere. How do we balance the need for affordable housing while also protecting existing communities and the cultures that come from those existing communities?
Kenny Rodgers
That's complex. I don't even know if there's - because we can pick so many cities. Talk about San Francisco and Seattle and these tech cities. Unfortunately, if I just want to make ends meet, so I sell for what I think is a big number, and I'm the first one in that neighborhood to sell for that number. Then everybody else now is selling for that number, and here comes the appraisal, and they're valuing based on the most recent comparisons, and that comparison now is keeping me from either maintaining a home I had, because I can't pay the taxes based on the new appraised value, so I'm selling. But now, what do I do with this windfall when there's nowhere else in this area for me to afford a new unit. The gentrification part, it's got to be a deliberate effort about putting affordable restrictions on some of these units. You can have both. You can have Whole Foods and people who work for Whole Foods living in the same neighborhood. We just have to plan for it. So smart planning is a part of it.
Maya Gwynn
Definitely. Keeping in mind the mom and pops and the people who have been there for a long time, because they're the people who are going to know so much about the community and what makes the community special in the first place. If you could change one policy or multiple policies tomorrow to make the biggest impact on affordable housing in Southern California, what would it be, or what would the policies be?
Kenny Rodgers
This is probably the most controversial thing I've ever said in public. I would build housing that the public controlled. That was for everybody. There need to be models for black and brown communities. There need to be models for rural communities, native communities, but the housing should not be something that we're struggling to get. I mean, we're humans. We shouldn't be trying to figure out, like, where do we shelter?
Maya Gwynn
What part do you feel about that is controversial?
Kenny Rodgers
The public part. People don't like public control things. So particularly the vision that people had of public housing for years, it was the old, densely populated, tall building. It doesn't have to look like that. It doesn't have to operate like that. And it shouldn't just be a certain level of income that should have access to it. Anybody of any income should have access to public housing. And maybe it's a scale, right? But again, I think that's a controversial thing, because I just took a large commodity off the table. You know, it'd be like saying, let's just give oranges away free. You know, the orange juice company is not gonna like that. But again, that's me with a magic wand.
Maya Gwynn
For listeners who care about this issue but don't know where to start, what's one concrete action they could take to help their own community with affordable housing?
Kenny Rodgers
Go to the city council's agenda. Go to the county commissioner's agenda and see what's on there that relates to the new housing development. Quite often, the people who don't want public housing built, the not in my backyard, people call them NIMBY. The NIMBY folk, they show up and they show up because they have this vision of who lives in affordable housing. And if you ask the people who are there, like, Hey, would you want the person bagging your groceries to live next door to you, they say, Oh, no problem. Or would you want the person that's rotating your tires to live next door to you? Absolutely. That's who is in affordable housing. But you're showing up to keep them from living in your backyard because you think that it's some bad person. You've painted in your mind, but if you can humanize them. So go to your local council meetings and stand up in favor of affordable housing when they say, this project will be housing families who make less than 80% or a certain percentage of the area median income, that's the one you go for. For veterans, for people who are unhoused, stand up for those projects. Have them built. If you want to go real, real deep, find the local housing authority and see how you can volunteer, or figure out the local developer who's supporting affordable housing. Those are starts.
Maya Gwynn
That's a great place to start. We're going to move to our rapid fire portion. So if your work had a theme song, what would it be?
Kenny Rodgers
The Jeffersons, Moving On Up.
Maya Gwynn
If you had to teach a master class or give a TED talk on a random skill you have, what would it be?
Kenny Rodgers
Nobody can see me right now, but I love fashion. I would set up a master class on here's how to accessorize. Here's how to make those outfits pop.
Maya Gwynn
Yeah, he looks very sharp. And what's your favorite Coachella Valley restaurant or landmark that reminds you of it?
Kenny Rodgers
There are so many great restaurants in Coachella Valley. There's so many Palm Springs, Palm Desert, just right off the top. My friend has a restaurant right down the street from my house called Wildest Restaurant. Now, farm to table kind of stuff. I love that. Wildest Restaurant in Palm Desert.
Maya Gwynn
And how can people keep up with you and support your work?
Kenny Rodgers
The group that works closely with the work we're doing in Coachella Valley, the initiative to build 10,000 units for housing, that's Lift to Rise. They can go to lifttorise.org. You could go to lift that's Liifund.org. Also, you could just Google Kenny Rodgers with a D.
Maya Gwynn
Thank you so much for coming.
Kenny Rodgers
Thank you.
Maya Gwynn
Kenny Rodgers is Deputy Market Director of the Low Income Investment Fund. Find this segment and others at kvcrnews.org/bpie. Support for this segment comes from the Black Equity Fund at IECF, advancing racial equity and supporting long term investments in black led organizations in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Join us again next week for Black Perspectives IE. For KVCR Public Media, I'm Maya Gwynn. Thank you.
